Episodes

Clinicians are treated as invincible, so when their own mental health suffers, many stay silent. Namit Choksi, a physician entrepreneur and health care executive, joins to explain how credentialing forms and a culture that treats wellbeing as a perk push doctors to hide depression, anxiety, and substance use until they reach a breaking point. You will hear why disclosing a behavioral health condition can threaten a clinician's malpractice and life insurance and trigger a fit-for-duty review, why...

Clinicians are pushed to do more with less, until many quietly conclude they are not enough. J. C. Sue, a family medicine physician and adjunct faculty member, returns to unpack where that belief comes from and why it does so much damage across medical school, residency, and practice. You will hear how the business side of medicine and a competitive training culture teach doctors that they must be perfect, why serving beyond your real limits leaves patients, employers, and clinicians all worse o...

Orthopedic surgeon Kevin J. Campbell discusses the article "." Kevin discusses the article through a practical distinction between first-generation patient engagement tools that increase access but also increase staff workload, and second-generation...

Most women lose feeling in their chest after a mastectomy, and almost no one warns them ahead of time. Emily Hansen, a patient advocate who has spent nearly two decades in health care communication working with surgeons and breast cancer survivors, joins to explain a consequence of survivorship that stays largely hidden. You will learn why loss of sensation is nearly universal after mastectomy, why nerves are among the slowest tissues in the body to recover, and why patients so often feel guilty...

Most doctor visits do not fail in the room. They fail after you walk out, holding a plan and no clear idea of when something has gone wrong enough to call back. In this episode, retired surgeon and patient advocate Alan P. Feren explains why "call me if it gets worse" is not real guidance, and what clear instructions actually look like. He argues that sharing responsibility with patients only works when both sides share clarity, because a threshold no one defined is one no patient can act on. Yo...

Doctors spend over a decade training and then quietly leave a fortune on the table when they handle their own money. In this episode, economics professor Hernan Moscoso Boedo explains why high income and years of schooling do not make physicians good investors. He compares the way doctors avoid the stock market to the way some people distrust vaccines, not because they understand the science, but because they do not trust the system protecting them. This episode is based on his article " Why you...

Most physicians who feel stuck in a job could actually afford to leave. They just can't stomach what the worst week might look like. Stanley Liu, cardiologist and fiduciary financial planner, discusses the KevinMD article " Physician career choices come down to risk tolerance ." You will hear the gap between risk capacity (what your finances can actually absorb) and risk tolerance (what you can emotionally accept), why the two are not the same, and how the "first do no harm" reflex bleeds from c...

A patient with a dying leg won't drive 20 miles for care. In Devin Zarkowsky's town, that's not a hypothetical. Vascular surgeon Devin Zarkowsky runs a solo office-based practice in a San Diego County town where peripheral arterial disease patients had nowhere local to go, and Jason McKittrick is the executive director of the Office-Based Facility Association. They discuss the KevinMD article " Why local care matters for peripheral arterial disease ." You will hear how the Medicare physician fee...

A week off does not fix burnout. The same problems are waiting when you get home, and the same person is walking back into them. Stacey Funt is a radiologist who runs a boutique wellness adventure travel company, mostly for women in their 40s through 60s, including a high share of physicians. She discusses the KevinMD article " Why immersive travel may be a powerful tool for behavior change ." You will hear the science behind identity-driven behavior change: awe, novelty, supportive groups, mean...

Calling a doctor a provider sounds harmless. The American College of Physicians says it isn't. Janet Jokela, former treasurer of the American College of Physicians, professor, and medical educator, discusses the KevinMD article " Physician vs. provider is an ethics issue, not just style ." She walks through how the word "provider" entered medicine through Medicare in 1965 and ended up lumping physicians together with hospitals and insurance companies as interchangeable "providers of services." Y...

Most clinical research treats patients like data points. What gets lost when researchers stop listening to the people they study, and what does it cost the science itself? Niharika Singh is a biomedical engineer and pre-medical student with research experience at Genentech, Abbott, AstraZeneca, and the Keck School of Medicine, and a global ambassador with the United Nations SURGhub. She discusses the KevinMD article " Patient involvement transforms modern clinical research ." You will hear the d...

A 30 to 40 percent Medicare cut just hit the doctors who keep your local hospital running, and the policy meant to stop hospital monopolies is accelerating them instead. John Birkmeyer, president of the medical group at Sound Physicians and a former Dartmouth health services researcher, discusses the KevinMD article " Medicare practice expense cuts will hurt patients ." You'll hear how CMS quietly slashed the practice expense portion of Medicare payments for the first time in 20 years, hitting i...

Your child is messaging neo-Nazis on Discord, role-playing the Columbine shooting on Roblox, or making fan art of mass killers, and you have no idea. That is the pattern Matthew Turner, an emergency medicine physician at Hershey Medical Center, is now seeing in his pediatric ER, where parents bring in children after spotting a chat-message leak that exposes months of online radicalization. He discusses the KevinMD article " The true crime community is radicalizing kids online ." You'll hear how ...

Imagine being penalized for delivering good care to your frailest patients. Medicare's quality scoring program was built for healthy outpatients, not the elderly residents of nursing homes, but it is the system doctors who round in skilled nursing facilities are forced to play. Steve Buslovich, a physician executive and geriatrician, discusses the KevinMD article " How Medicare's MIPS impacts skilled nursing facilities and clinicians ." You'll hear how MIPS metrics conflict with the five-star qu...

The words doctors use during fertility care can wound the patient sitting across the desk. "Failed cycle." "Poor responder." "Ovarian failure." For a woman already carrying the grief of a child she has never had, those words can feel like nails in a coffin. Oluyemisi Famuyiwa, a fertility specialist, argues that infertility grief is compounded by cultural stigma and by clinical language medicine rarely audits. This episode is based on her article " The emotional impact of infertility is grief un...

Patients are being cut off from medications they need, doctors are afraid to prescribe, and the reason traces back to political donations most Americans never see. Richard A. Lawhern, health care educator and patient advocate, joins us to explain how lobbying money shapes health care legislation and what patients can do about it. This episode is based on his article " Health care lobbying is destroying the U.S. system ," published on KevinMD. You will hear why $4.5 billion was spent influencing ...

Most of the people deciding where billions of health care dollars get invested have never treated a patient. Harsha Moole, a physician scientist and health care venture capital founder, joins Kevin to discuss his KevinMD article " The crash cart that taught me physician-led investing ." You'll hear how a single overlooked workflow problem on a hospital crash cart became a multi-hospital company, why physician-led groups screen every deal through three gates of clinical, regulatory, and reimburse...

Most doctors were never taught how to sit with a patient's grief, anger, or fear without absorbing it. Eva Minkoff, a health care executive coach, and Kim Downey, a physical therapist and physician advocate, join Kevin to discuss their KevinMD article " How regulating clinical empathy prevents physician burnout ." You'll hear why physicians who lean too far into patient emotion burnout, why those who shut down lose trust and treatment adherence, and why both paths end in the same exhaustion. Eva...

Medical students who skip writing their own reflections are not lazy, they are surviving an irrational system. Kathleen Muldoon, a coach and professor, returns to discuss what student AI use in medical education actually reveals about the curriculum, the hidden incentives behind it, and why she calls students in instead of catching them. This episode is based on her article " Driving medical education reform through intellectual honesty ," published on KevinMD. You will hear why pass-fail course...

Most patients on antidepressants are told they can't take methylene blue, even for brain fog. Steven E. Warren, a physician and longevity medicine clinician, joins Kevin to discuss his KevinMD article " 51 cases that reframe methylene blue serotonin syndrome ." You'll hear why 50 of the 51 published serotonin-syndrome cases involved high-dose IV methylene blue given under anesthesia, mostly during parathyroid surgery, rather than the low oral doses used in outpatient longevity practice. Steven w...

Up to 40 percent of infertility cases involve combined male and female factors, but the male partner is often skipped. Erica Bove, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist, returns to discuss why that gap exists and what can be done about it. This episode is based on her article " What is often overlooked about male factor infertility ," published on KevinMD. You will hear how prescribed testosterone for low energy and low sex drive can wipe out sperm production, sometimes irrever...

Your ER doctor has about 25 minutes to figure out your medical history and decide what to do next. Hamed Husaini, an emergency physician and physician executive, explains why so much of that data never reaches the bedside and what AI can do about it. This episode is based on his article " AI in health care data management: Curing the EHR overload ," published on KevinMD. You will hear why records from skilled nursing facilities, primary care, and home health rarely get read in time, why duplicat...

The same instinct that makes you a careful clinician may be the one sabotaging your financial future. Cardiologist and fiduciary financial planner Stanley Liu joins this episode to explain why physicians' deeply trained aversion to risk becomes maladaptive once it leaves the hospital. This episode is based on his article " Physician financial risk: Balancing capacity and tolerance ," published on KevinMD. You will learn why risk capacity and risk tolerance are two different variables, and why mi...

What if the cure for physician burnout has been making it worse the whole time? Lisa Rubiano, an internal medicine physician and physician coach, spent over a decade as a hospitalist before burning out in 2021 and stepping back to figure out what really went wrong. This episode is based on her article " Why resilience is not the cure for physician burnout ," published on KevinMD. You will hear why the resilience narrative quietly shifts blame onto individual physicians while letting toxic system...